Dad, Girl Scout Cookies & Thank Yous

This is 95% a Team Black blog. 95% about Team Black, personal triumphs and adventures.

But I'm going to share with you something that is partially personal and partially professional.

Here's my blog about a lesson my Dad taught me in elementary school that has professional application, so much so that I blogged about it at work: http://www.connectioncafe.com/posts/2011/02-february/dad-girl-scouts-and-thank.html.

My Dad is great and I love him.

Feels Like April

I'm 100% certain it is February. All the signs are there. Valentine's Day last Monday, Emal & Brenda's birthdays on Friday (happy birthday y'all!) and a calendar that abruptly ends on the 28th. It must be February.

But it feels like April...minus all the excessive birthday cake. It has been in the 70s all week in Austin. If I heard right, Wichita Falls (north of Big D) actually set a heat record for this time of year with a glorious 84.

With the lovely weather, I've been walking Lexi lots and opening every window I can find. In a nutshell, our lives have been colored warm and spring-like.

Friday Nichole, Brittany and our new friend Kendra came over for a girls' night of wine and munchies. Kendra is a coworker of Amanda's Aunt Pam up in Boston and she recently relocated to Austin to take a different position. So now she's here and our friend; it's great! Anyways, they came over and let's just say it was an extended night. I believe I'm finding that to be the key in making my 2 day weekend feel sufficient: stay up so late Friday that it feels like a weekend day in its own right. Done.

Saturday I did some outlet mall shopping where I rescued a box of Girl Scout Cookies from a Brownie troop. All part of the no cookie left behind policy here at Team Black. Then I went on a long Lexi walk and read outside on the porch in the sunshine (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). We ended the night at Erin and Jon's with venison burgers -omg delicious- and baby-palooza consisting of a 6 year old, 1 year old, 3 month old and Lexi. All 4 were carried around like babies for a large portion of the evening...despite that only two are the appropriate age/species for such.

Being able to grill burgers outside in February while drinking margaritas and only needing a light sweater when the wind picks up is excellent. And is exactly what I had in mind for living in Texas.

Happy oddly-warm-February to ya!

$$ Tips From Us, 2

You may recall the original $$ Tips From Us post from last year. I actually got a positive comment on it. And I started thinking about that today when my first conversation of the day was receiving advice from financial planner and one of my last was giving advice to a friend.

So I'm here to do a sequel. Here's three money tips from us.

1. Have a misc line item. First, I suggest line items in your budget. They can be as broad or narrow as you like. And I highly suggest a misc line item. For us, "misc" includes gifts, house things (like hoses or dish towels), puppy dog nail trimming, people hair cuts, Christmas lights, etc. It's a big list in our world so it's kinda a big dollar amount. These are things that don't happen every month, but gosh darn it, you know they are going to happen sometime in the year. Just because they aren't regular doesn't mean you can get away with not accounting for it.
2. Spending money. This was originally a Ross idea that I was not into, but as much as I hate to admit it, he was right. This works swell for us. If we're good friends, I've probably told you about this so I'll be brief. Basically we each get a little money every month for crap. For me "crap" is Starbucks and pedicures. For him "crap" is video games and maybe golfing. Frankly, I don't know a whole lot about what his "crap" is because it comes from his spending money and thus doesn't affect me. And that's the beauty of it. In general we define spending money as something that benefits you alone including happy hour (without the other one), pedicures, golf, Starbucks, alone-vacations and the like. (Note: it does not include gas which I've seen some couples do and I have to admit, I just disagree with. You can't help if your job is 30 miles away and his is 3. Or if you take his car everywhere because it gets better mileage. These things hardly seem fair so I recommended having gas as its own line item.)
3. Invest. I knew this...kinda but this is actually borrowed from Erik, my new bff at UBS. Today he told me that we have to invest more. Apparently cold hard cash, while awesome, ain't gonna cover it for retirement. I'm taking Erik's advice and as soon as I can figure out the paperwork associated with my 401k will be increasing my contribution from 3% to 5% in hopes of ending my days in a South Texas beach condo. Confession: This is the tip I know the least about. Investments and I are still a relatively new friendship but I hope to become besties soon.

If you and your honey are trying to figure out your money, I hope this helps. We're not experts but every once in a while we stumble upon something that works really well and I say, why reinvent the wheel.

It's Spring. In February.

78. That's how warm it got today in Austin. 60 is the low tonight. And though the weather has been beautiful like this for a few days now, what really made me appreciate it was getting into my PJs tonight.

Shorts and a tank top. Without the heater on. LOVE IT.

More Food! NoRTH

"...just like an independent. See? 'Chain' doesn't have to be a dirty word."

- Texas Monthly

In Austin we're big fans of locally owned places. While I must admit that Team Black is not the best at being regular patrons of locally owned establishments, we do try our best for special occassions or dinners out where the motivation is more than "I don't wanna cook. Where can we grab dinner cheaply?"

Tonight we did a Valentine's Day double-date to NoRTH, a modern Italian place near my office which until Googling, I mostly assumed was locally owned. However, it is not but the Texas Monthly quote above kinda says it all: chain does not necessarily equal bad. (And you know my feelings about Texas Monthly: love.)

NoRTH, one of a small chain in the western part of the country, served us delicious Italian food tonight. I ordered the scallops with wild mushroom risotto. My first risotto experience, inspired by the many risottos on Top Chef, and it was excellent. I can confidently tell you this was one of the best Italian meals I've ever had.

The scallops I had in NYC were good, but it was really the fuschia puree that took the cake there. Here the scallops were delicious...possibly in a slightly undercooked way (it was much more appealing than it probably sounds). They literally melted in my mouth. And the risotto was so mushroomy! Yum!

I was also pleased with the calamari, bruschetti trio and the wine. The second and slightly more expensive glass of wine proved to be worth the price as it was definitely better than the first (and no, not just because it was the second; it was a full hour later).

If you are in north Austin and want a nice Italian place, let me be the first one to recommend NoRTH in the Domain.

The Life of Pi

I started 2011 out by reading the first book on my year-long reading list: The Life of Pi. I had no idea what it was about but knew it was one of those books you are "supposed to read" because "its really good," or so they say.

The first quarter or third of the book was slow. Even having finished it, I'm not terribly sure why it was included. I think it could have been 20 pages of character background instead of 100.

The next section of the book was very interesting. I won't be giving away too much plot if I tell you there was a boat filled with zoo animals and a teenage boy, all stranded in the Pacific Ocean. See? Interesting. I bet you want to figure out how that works. Reading this section was easy and interesting, many trials and tribulations to keep the plot going. However I have to admit, I still wasn't sure why The Life of Pi was receiving such high acclaim.

The very very end though explained exactly why.

It had a "The Sixth Sense" type ending; one that makes you want to do the whole thing over just to confirm that it does all align. I was really surprised by the end and it made the rest of the book (sans that first quarter) be all the more intriguing and interesting. And it definitely leaves you with a "this is a really good book. people should read it" mentality.

I'm not entirely sure if 4-5 pages of awesome ending puts a book in the "really really good" category but it definitely elevates it from hum-drum.

Verdict: Skim the first quarter but read the rest, especially the final section. Wow.